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Yes, internals are more convenient. And it's about time for an upgrade, but I haven't heard anything.

Checking newegg, the largest 9.5mm internal is the same 2TB I bought a year ago. The largest SSD is 2TB. SSDs are about to pass laptop HDs in capacity as well as speed. With SSD prices falling faster than HDs, they need to introduce larger HDs or write off the laptop HD market. SSDs have already exterminated HDs below 250 GB, and 500 GB is under pressure.

I'm hoping for a bigger 2.5" to upgrade to within the next couple months.

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It's been a couple years since we reached 2TB in the 2.5"/9.5mm form factor. I know there's a Toshiba 3TB, and a Seagate SMR 4TB, both in 15mm. Both have been out for over a year.

I take my video library with me on vacations, so capacity is more important than speed. Any rumors of 9.5mm drives coming that are bigger than 2 TB?

The SEAGATE 2.5" 15mm thick 3TB and 4TB drives are BOTH PMR and have 5 platers and 10 heads.

As for 9.5mm thick drives, there's only one with 2TB, that no matter officially many places sell as a Seagate drive, is actually a Samsung drive...AVOID this drive. It's problematic with LARGE tendency for sooner than later start to make all kind of noises.

This drive is not SMR but it doesn't seem to be a pure PMR either...Samsung have this drive also in 1.5TB capacity but using standard 500GB platers and PMR heads that, according to the rare info i had read about it, seems to work well w/o weird noises.

Both are 3 platers and 6 heads.

Finally, Seagate have a new 7mm thick 2TB drive with only 2 platers and 4 heads but is SMR, no reviews yet.

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I tried upgrading a PS4 with that Seagate 2TB SMR drive and it didn't work reliably. Locked up and corrupted data multiple times, Console couldn't boot anymore and had to be restored from backup.

Everything returned to normal once it got reverted to the 1TB factory HDD (made by HGST). Outside this application the drive still seems to work (albeit very slow), but it shows that SMR outside of special applications isn't really ready for prime time, despite Seagate trying the hardest selling to consumers. Without even specifying on the drive what you get - I just ordered a 2.5in 2 TB drive and didn't even know what the issue was, until I found out it was SMR.

Interestingly there is now no <=9.5mm PMR drive above 1 TB in production anymore.

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It's been 15 months now, still no sign of a 3 TB drive in 9.5mm. Unless I want to drop $1500 on a 4TB SSD. I didn't think it would take this long for an upgrade to appear. Larger drives used to appear like clockwork.

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The HDD economics are swinging the wrong way. We're already seeing Seagate starting to fall, will be interesting to see what happens in the HDD space the next year or two. Move will primarily be toward 3.5" capacity...but even that is a long term loser.